So that "immerse yourself and spy on nazi's" guy on Facebook

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His comments about how the Democrats/Liberals will get their butts kicked match up with my own opinions, so... well... confirmation bias.

I've been reading right-wing news off-and-on for years. I haven't been reading any explicit nazi groups until recently... but to be perfectly honest over the last year or two I haven't had to as long as I kept up on the usual suspects. They're in there. They really are.

They have learned a lot from the playbook of successful tea-partiers. They've learned they can drum up support for almost anything they say as long as they phrase it in certain ways:

In 'sensible' ways (look at these stats I know you won't fact check or take in context!)

In a 'fuck liberals' way (look at those snowflakes that laugh at you while they force their PC ways on us)

Appealing to pure emotion (Obama is still running shadow agencies that want to steal your guns).

Starting with a conspiracy theory they believe and just tacking a little extra to it. (Hillary killed all those cabinet members in the 90's and now she's silencing Bernie supporters).

Pointing out 'liberal' hypocrisy (The blacks can use the N word!)

(Again, these aren't all nazi tactics... the teapartiers were using them for years)

Of course some of them don't care about drumming up support. Those are the ones that get premier mention in the article about 'spying on nazis', when they feel they're in completely supportive environments. For some items I have to take the author at his word, but I do buy into the overall message he was making based on the changes in comments, biased news articles, and tone I've seen over the last few years. Not to discount the Russian angle... but the changes aren't all due to Russians... though of course Russians may actually be part of the nationalist growth as well.

But that said, people very rarely claim to be Nazis even when they clearly are (the old 'stormfront' group notwithstanding). Biggest clues are the white supremacy, corporate-growth-above-all-else, and the favored elite not having to suffer consequences. There are of course dozens of other clues, but those are the big three that seem to get pushed into all comments regardless of topic. From there they get included in the weekly talking points and even the spam comments until they penetrate the 'standard' meme-sphere of our ex-facebook-friends (or 'unfollowed' facebook friends). Look at your republican uncle's Facebook feed. If you don't have a republican uncle, just find someone that is an open Trump supporter and look at their feed. No, really... do it. That is now where we are starting from in a conversation even with many of the 'sensible' conservatives.

The teaparty movement is in its death throws. It had been populated with a few of these people, but has now been snuffed out in exchange for taking over the party from the top. This is the new normal.